Consolation

  Bitch.

  ‘I have to go home.’

  ‘Already?’ he asked, forcing himself.

  ‘You know I have an oral exam on Monday,’ sighed his sweetheart.

  He had forgotten.

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Right, let’s spare ourselves the rest of this deadly conversation. In the end he called her a taxi and she went off to revise what she probably already knew by heart.

  When he came back towards the house after a vague kiss and some strong encouragement, the gravel crunched beneath the mock orange.

  ‘So, it would seem you’re in love?’

  About to answer no, he came out with the opposite.

  ‘Oh? That’s nice . . .’

  He said nothing.

  ‘And you’ve . . . How long have you known her?’

  Charles raised his head, looked at her, smiled at her, and looked down again.

  Then went back into the noise.

  For a long time . . .

  He was restless, sought her with his gaze now and again, didn’t see her, drank, forgot himself, forgot her.

  But when his sisters asked everyone to be silent, when the music stopped and the lights went out, when an enormous cake was brought in, and his mother clasped her hands, and his father pulled a speech from his pocket while others were whispering ssh and oh and ssh again, a hand took hold of his and pulled him away from the circle.

  He followed her, climbed the steps behind her, hearing snatches of bravura on the way, ‘so many years . . . dear children . . . hardship . . . trust . . . helped . . . always . . .’ then she opened a door at random and turned round.

  They went no farther, stood there in the dark, and all he knew about life in that moment of her life, was that her hair was no longer wet.

  She shoved him so hard that the door handle dug into his back. He did not have the presence of mind to find it painful, however. She was already kissing him.

  Devouring her face, his face, devouring each other.

  They had never been so far apart.

  Charles struggled with the hairpins in her chignon, while she battled with his belt buckle; he spread her hair, she opened his trousers, he tried to keep her head straight while she kept looking down, he was hunting for words, words he’d said over and over a thousand times and which had changed when his voice did, whereas she was begging for him to be quiet, he was forcing her to look at him while she moved to one side to bite his ear, he nuzzled into her neck while she was biting him until he bled, he hadn’t even begun to touch her and already she had wrapped herself around his leg and was pressing herself against him, moaning.

  Between his hands he was holding the love of his life, the Madonna of his childhood, the most beautiful of all, the obsession of so many nights and the reason for all his prizes, whereas she was holding . . . something else altogether . . .

  The taste of blood, the buzz of alcohol, the smell of her sweat, her whimpers against his skin, the pain in his back, her violence, her orders, her fingernails – none of that could affect his courtly love. He was stronger, managed to hold her still, and she had no choice but to listen to him murmuring her name. But headlamps passed in the distance and he glimpsed her smile.

  So he gave up. Restored her arms to her, her twisted bracelets, bent his knees and closed his eyes.

  She touched him, stroked him, slipped her fingers into his mouth, licked his eyelids, whispered inaudible words into his ear, pulled on his jaw to make him cry out while obliging him to remain silent, grasped his hand, spat in it, guided it, undulated, moved back and forth on him, hooked him to her, almost broke him –

  May he be damned. Damn who he was, damn his feelings. Damn her. Damn this fraud. He pushed her away.

  He didn’t want this.

  And yet he had dreamt it all. The worst debauchery, the most unbelievable phantasms, his clothes torn from him, his pain, his pleasure, his pleas, their saliva, his cum and their kisses, the . . . All of it. He had imagined all of it, but not this. He loved her too much.

  Too well, too badly, too inappropriately, perhaps, but always too much.

  ‘I can’t,’ he moaned. ‘Not like this.’

  She froze for a moment, dumbfounded, before slumping forward, her head against his chest.

  ‘Sorry,’ he continued, ‘sorr—’

  She moved her hips one last time to let her skirt slip down. She dressed him in silence, tightened his belt, smoothed his shirt, smiled as she saw the number of orphaned buttonholes and then, her skin softer, her arms by her side, she came back to him and let him put his arms around her at last.

  Sorry. Sorry. That was all he knew how to say. Without even knowing if he was talking to her or to himself.

  To her beautiful soul, or his crotch.

  Sorry.

  He held her tight, breathed in her nape, caressed her hair, making up for twenty years and ten lost minutes. Heard his heart pounding, managed the disaster while applause filtered through the floorboards, and he hunted for . . . other words.

  Other words.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No. It’s me,’ whispered a little voice, ‘I –’ and broke. ‘I thought you’d grown up.’

  Someone was shouting his name. They were looking for him in the garden. Charles! The photo!

  ‘Go. Go and join the others. Leave me, I’ll come down later.’

  ‘Anouk . . .’

  ‘Leave me, I said.’

  I have grown up, he wanted to retort, but the tone of her last words dissuaded him. So he did as he was told and went to pose, between his sisters, for his parents, like the good little boy that he was.

  *

  Claire had just switched the light off.

  Then had her abortion.

  And Alexis went on fucking himself up.

  But played like a god, so they said.

  Charles went away. Portugal to begin with, then the United States.

  He left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a fine medal, enough vocabulary to translate love songs, and an Australian fiancée.

  Her he lost on the way home.

  He suffered. A great deal. He worked for other people. Eventually got his final diploma. Joined the order. Put up his brass plate. For some obscure reason he won the competition for a job he never thought he’d get, and bit off more than he could chew. It turned out to be a rough slog. Eventually he learned, most often at his own expense, that the ‘responsibility of the liberal architect is unlimited, and that he must be insured for everything he says, does, or writes.’ Henceforth he required a receipt every time he sharpened his pencil. He associated himself with a lad who was much more talented than he was, but less ingenious. He left him the glory, the bright, luminous moments, and the interviews. He played the eminence grise, which was a relief, took care of the dirty work, and it was thanks to him that all the aforementioned held together.

  He saw Anouk again. They had good-natured lunches together where they talked about nothing more than good nature. He found her as beautiful as ever, but he no longer gave her the opportunity to read his thoughts. He buried his grandmother. He fell out with Alexis for good. During those years he lost a first burst of hair and acquired, beneath his high forehead, a sort of reputation. A label of quality, traceability, as stockbreeders would say. He held her hand one last time. He no longer had the courage to witness her going downhill. He cancelled one lunch, too much work, then a second one, then a third.

  He cancelled everything.

  He filled in title blocks, bought walls, had affairs, stopped going to jazz clubs, which only gave him the blues, and then, during one of his ‘little’ projects on the side, met a man who liked his marble and had a pretty wife.

  He built a doll’s house.

  And moved in.

  And ended up falling asleep at floor level, in a worn-out sofa bed, between the very walls that had witnessed all of this.

  Which means, not a gre
at deal.

  He’d come back to square one, he’d lost first one woman then another, and perhaps even a third, and a few hours from now he’d have a wretched backache.

  8

  CHARLES WENT HOME at the same time as Mathilde and granted Laurence the famous ‘conversation’ she so insisted upon, one Saturday afternoon when they were alone in the flat.

  It wasn’t really a conversation, either. More like a long litany of complaints. The umpteenth trial. In the end, she even wept. It was the first time, and he was moved. He took her hand. She sidestepped, saying it was probably just her oestrogen levels and her hormones. She added that he couldn’t possibly understand, and withdrew her hand. He sidestepped by opening a bottle of champagne.

  ‘Is it my vaginal dryness we’re celebrating?’ she scoffed, taking the glass he handed to her.

  ‘No. My birthday.’

  She struck her forehead, and went over to give him a kiss.

  Mathilde arrived shortly thereafter. She’d been at the flea market with her girlfriends, and she went straight to her room and closed the door, leaving in her wake a hurried, ‘Evening,’ and a pair of misshapen ballet slippers.

  Laurence sighed, annoyed, and also probably somewhat relieved to know that she was not entirely alone in her negligence.

  It was just then that Miss Draughty Doors breezed in with a huge package sloppily tied up in newspaper.

  ‘I had one, er, bleep of a time to find this, y’know.’

  And handed him the box with a big smile.

  ‘I spent every Saturday on it!’

  ‘I thought you were with Camille revising for your exams!’ exclaimed her mother.

  ‘Yeah, well, she was helping me find it, wasn’t she! Any bubbly left?’

  Charles adored this kid.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  ‘Yes of course,’ he smiled, ‘but it . . . uh smells odd, don’t you think?’

  ‘Hah,’ she went, with a shrug of her shoulders, ‘that’s normal . . . It smells old.’

  Charles clapped his hands.

  ‘Right then, girls, shall we do the usual? Shall I take you to dinner at Mario’s?’

  ‘You aren’t going to go out looking like that, are you?’ choked Laurence.

  He didn’t hear her. He admired his reflection in the shop windows and in the enchanted gaze of his stepdaughter.

  ‘Now I’ve seen it all,’ they heard Laurence grumble, walking behind them.

  Hanging from his arm was his reassurance: ‘Well, I think you look super classy.’

  He replied that he thought so too.

  It was a Renoma from the 1970s. A groovy mac with cake-slice lapels and sleeves that stopped at his elbows. The belt was missing, alas, and a few buttons.

  And it was torn here and there.

  And it stank.

  Really.

  But . . .

  It was blue.

  *

  There was no trough running down the middle of the frilly duvet that night, and in lieu of a last minute present he found its stand-in, wrapped in a gorgeous nightgown.

  To put an end to an awkward situation, Charles rolled over on his side.

  The silence which followed this . . . pantomime, was fairly painful. To lighten things up, he joked, bittersweet, ‘It must be a sense of solidarity . . . my hormones are no more biddable than yours, it would seem . . .’

  She found it funny, or at least he hoped she did, and eventually went off to sleep.

  He didn’t.

  It was his first mechanical failure.

  Last week, however, he’d got up the nerve to ask for advice about his bloody hair, which was now falling out in handfuls, and the reply they gave him was that there was nothing that could be done: it was due to too much testosterone.

  ‘Take it as a sign of virility . . .’ concluded the chemist with an adorable smile. (He was completely bald.)

  Oh really?

  Another mystery that defied his fine logic.

  One mystery too many. Or too humiliating at any rate.

  Stop right there, he mused. Stop. He had to get rid of all these trifles, give his nagging conscience the boot, and get back on his feet.

  Failing to keep his appointments, playing hooky from conventions halfway round the world, wasting the agency’s money, frittering away his time at ruined abbeys, speaking to ghosts, bringing them back to life for the morbid pleasure of asking their forgiveness, ruining his lungs, breaking the office equipment and throwing his back out between the sheets of his youth – all that might be well and good, but not getting it up? It wasn’t on, it simply was not on.

  ‘You got that? Stop it,’ he said again, out loud, to be sure it was perfectly clear.

  And to prove his good faith, he switched the light back on. He reached out and grabbed the decree of 22 March 2004 pertaining to the fire-resistance of construction products, elements, and projects.

  Directives, decisions, codes, decrees, laws, opinions of the committee, propositions from the director of Civil Safety, the 25 articles and their appendices.

  After that, he fell asleep stroking his cock.

  Oh. Just barely.

  The modest fist-thumping of a routed general at his most faithful trooper. Time to head home, lad, time to head home.

  The crows will take care of the rest . . .

  9

  AND HE DID just what he said he would do: he got rid of them all.

  Romeo, Abelard, little Marcel Proust, and the entire bunch of cretins.

  He didn’t notice the coming of spring. He worked harder than ever. Rummaged in Laurence’s things and stole some sleeping tablets. Lay like a zombie on the sofa, only went to the bedroom when any danger of improbable intimacy had passed, started growing some sort of beard that initially incited the mockery of his two housemates, then their threats, and finally their indifference.

  He was there. And he was no longer there.

  He was overextending himself, pretending to go along with things, but only vaguely. He would act as if he were concentrating on every word whenever anyone was speaking to him, and would go on to ask for the details the moment they were out of earshot.

  He didn’t notice that people were whispering behind his back.

  And he couldn’t understand why so many projects were suspended. The elections, they told him. Oh, right . . . the elections.

  He untangled snarled skeins, spent hours on the telephone with people, and in endless meetings with men and women who were forever bandying about new acronyms. Verification offices, defence committees, coordination missions, study centres, technical controllers, Socotec and the Veritas office up to your ears, new articles modifying the CCH by imposing a mandatory CT on the ERP of the first four categories, the IGH and class C buildings. Nincompoops at the Chamber of Commerce, megalomaniacal mayors, incompetent assistants, insane legislators, furious entrepreneurs, alarmist forecasters and people prepared to file a report on absolutely anything.

  One morning, a voice reminded him that his various construction sites were producing 310 million tonnes of waste a year. One evening, another voice, less aggressive, and for a project that promised to be infernal, finally submitted the figures for an estimation of the vulnerability of existing inventory.

  He was exhausted, and didn’t listen to anyone any more, but on a page in his notebook he had jotted down the words: The vulnerability of existing inventory.

  ‘Have a nice weekend!’

  Young Marc, a huge bag on his shoulder, had come to say goodbye and, as the boss didn’t react, went on to add, ‘Hey . . . Do you remember what that means?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Charles swung his chair round to look at him out of politeness, and to shake himself out of his lethargy.

  ‘Weekend, you know? Those two really weird days at the end of the week?’

  Charles allowed a weary smile onto his face. He liked this boy. Recognized in him a few traits from his own past . . .

  His somewhat clumsy enthusiasm, his
insatiable curiosity, his need to find his Masters and suck them to the bone. To read everything about them, absolutely everything, in particular the most abstruse. The most woolly-minded theories, speeches long disappeared, facsimiles of sketches, comprehensive surveys translated into English and praised to the skies, or published in the back of beyond, surveys that no one had ever understood. (And here he could thank his stars in passing, if he had had the Internet and all its temptations at that age, what an abyss that would have been . . .)

  And then the extraordinary capacity for work, the courteous discretion, the way he hovered between formal and casual, the self-confidence that had nothing to do with pawing at the dust of ambition, but still allowed him to believe that the Pritzker Prize was an adventure in life that was actually conceivable; and then there was even that long mop of hair that would begin to thin before too long . . .

  ‘Where are you off to with all that gear?’ he asked. ‘To the ends of the earth?’

  ‘Yes, more or less. Out to the country . . . My parents’ place.’

  Charles would have liked to prolong this unexpected moment of complicity – keep the conversation going, ask him, for example, ‘Oh, really? Whereabouts?’ or ‘I’ve always wondered which year you finished?’ or even ‘How did you end up here, actually?’ but he was too tired, sadly, to take the opportunity. And it was only when the brilliant young beanpole was hurrying towards the door that Charles saw the book sticking out of his bag.

  An original edition of Delirious New York.

  ‘I see you’re still in your Dutch period.’

  Marc began to stammer like a little kid with his fingers in the biscuit tin. ‘Oh, yes, I admit . . . Really fascinating bloke, I, and –’

  ‘Oh, I completely understand! That was the book that sealed his reputation and earned him respect, and he hadn’t even built a single skyscraper . . . Hold on, I’ll head out with you.’

  As he was punching in the alarm code, he added, ‘I was very curious at your age, and I was lucky to be present at some particularly hair-raising workshop sessions, but if there is one thing that really bowled me over, you know, it was when he presented his project for the library at Jussieu in 1989 . . .’